Henry Constable
Henry Constable (1562 - October 9, 1613) was an English poet. Life Overview Constable, son of Sir Robert Constable, was educatd at Cambridge, but becoming a Roman Catholic, went to Paris, and acted as an agent for the Catholic powers. He died at Liège. In 1592 he published Diana, a collection of sonnets, and contributed to Englands Helicon 4 poems, including "Diaphenia" and "Venus and Adonis." His style is characterised by fervour and richness of color.John William Cousin, "Constable, Henry," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, 95. Web, Dec. 28, 2017. Family Constable was a son of Sir Robert Constable of Newark, by Christiana, daughter of John Dabridgecourt of Astley or Langdon Hall, Warwickshire, and widow of Anthony Forster. A niece of his mother, also called Christiana Daubridgcourt, married William Belchier, and was mother of Daubridgcourt Belchier.Lee, 34. His father, the grandson of Sir Marmaduke Constable (1480-1645), and son of Sir Robert Constable of Everingham, by Catharine (sister of Thomas Manners, earl of Rutland), was knighted by the Earl of Essex while serving with the English army in Scotland in 1570; a letter from him to his wife's kinsman, the Earl of Shrewsbury, dated in the same year, describes some military operations (Lodge, Illustrations, ii. 42). Subsequently he became one of Queen Elizabeth's pensioners, and in 1576 drew up a treatise on the 'Ordering of a Camp,' 2 copies of which remain in manuscript at the British Museum (Harl. MSS. 836, 837). He was marshal of Berwick from 1576 to 1678, and died in 1591. Youth and education Henry was born in 1662, and matriculated at the age of 16 as a fellow-commoner of St John's College, Cambridge. On 15 January 1579-80 he earned a B.A. by a special grace of the senate. Wood appears to be in error in asserting that Constable "spent some time among the Oxonian muses" (Athenæ Oxon, ed. Bliss, i. 14). Constable was the friend of Sir Philip Sidney (cf. Apologie for Poetry, 1695), of Sir John Harington (cf. Orlando Furioso, xxxiv), and of Edmund Bolton. Poet and Catholic activist There is much obscurity about Constable's later life. At an early age he became a Roman catholic, and took up his residence in Paris. Verse by him was meanwhile circulated, apparently in manuscript, among his English friends and gave him a literary reputation. Letters of his addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham from Paris in July 1584 and April 1585 point to his employment for a short time in the spy-service oi the English government. In 1595 and the following year he was in communication with Anthony Bacon, Essex's secretary, and his correspondent admitted that his religion was the only thing to his discredit. He was clearly anxious at this period to stand well with Essex, probably with a view to returning home. In a letter addressed to the earl (6 Oct. 1595) he denied that he wished the restitution of Roman Catholicism in England at the risk of submitting his country to foreign tyranny, and begged for an introduction from Essex to the king of France, or for some employment in Essex's service. In October 1597 he had definitely thrown in his lot with the French government. "One Constable, a fine poetical wit, who resides in Paris," wrote an English agent from Liège (21 Oct. 1597), "has in his head a plot to draw the queen to be a catholic." A few months later Constable wrote to Essex that he was endeavoring to detach English catholics from their unpatriotic dependence on Spain. In 1598 Constable was agitating for the formation of a new English catholic college in Paris, and was maturing a scheme by which the catholic powers were to assure King James of Scotland his succession to the English throne, on the understanding that he would relieve the English catholics of their existing disabilities. In March 1598-9 Constable arrived in Edinburgh armed with a commission from the pope; but his request for an interview with James I was refused. He entered into negotiations, however, with the Scottish government in behalf of the papacy, and remained in Scotland till September. After his return to Paris Constable declared that James preferred to rely on the English puritans, and that he had no further interest in the king's cause. He made James a present of a book, apparently his poems, in July 1600. Meanwhile Constable became a pensioner of the king of France, but on James I's accession in England he resolved to risk returning to his own country. He wrote without result (11 June 1603) for the necessary permission to Sir Robert Cecil; came to London nevertheless, and in June of the following year was lodged in the Tower. He petitioned Cecil to procure his release; protested his loyalty, and before December 1604 was set free (Winwood, Memoriall, ii. 36). Nothing is known of his later history except that he died at Liège on 9 October 1613. Writing Constable's sonnets are too full of quaint conceits to be read nowadays with much pleasure, but his vocabulary and imagery often indicate real passion and poetic feeling. The Spirituall Sonnettes breathe genuine religious fervour. His pastoral lyrics are less laboured, and their fresh melody has the true Elizabethan ring. In his own day Constable's poems were curiously popular. Francis Meres (Palladis Tamia, 1598) and Edmund Bolton ("Hypercritica," in Haslewood, Critical Essays, ii. 250) are very loud in their praises, but the surest sign of his popularity are the lines placed in the mouth of one of the characters in the ‘Returne from Pernassus’ (ed. Macray, p. 85): :Sweate Constable doth take the wandring eare :And layes it up in willing prisonment. ''Diana'' On 22 Sept. 1592 there was entered in the Stationers' Company Registers a book by Constable entitled Diana. This work, containing 23 sonnets, was published in the same year, but only 1 copy is now known to be extant. Its full title runs: Diana. The praises of his Mistres in certaine sweete Sonnets, by H. C. London, printed by I.C. for Richard Smith, 1592. Lee, 35. The book opens with a sonnet to his absent Diana, and is followed by a brief prose address "To the Gentlemen Readers" (not reprinted). Each of the next 20 sonnets 18 headed sonnetto primo, secundo, and so on. The last sonnet but one is entitled "A Calculation upon the Birth of an Honourable Lady's Daughter; born in the year 1588 and on a Friday," and the final poem is headed "Ultimo Sonnetto." In 1594 appeared a 2nd edition, under the title of Diana; or, The excellent conceitful sonnets of H.C.; augmented with divers Quatorzains of honourable and learned personages. Divided into viii. Decades, London (by James Roberts for Richard Smith). A perfect copy is at the Bodleian; an imperfect one at the British Museum. The date on the title-page is in most copies misprinted 1584 for 1594. The collection includes all the sonnets which had appeared in the 1st edition except the opening one, "To his absent Diana," but they are mingled with new matter, and no attempt is made to preserve the original order. The edition is prefaced by a sonnet, signed Richard Smith, "Unto her Majesty's sacred honourable Maids," and includes 76 sonnets in all, the 8th decade including only 5, while on the last page is printed the unnumbered sonnet from the 1st edition dated 1588. 7 sonnets in "the third decade" and 1 in the 4th were rightly printed as Sir Philip Sidney's compositions in the appendix to the 3rd edition of the Arcadia in 1598. The volume was doubtless a bookseller's venture in which many poets besides Constable are represented. Other editions are referred by bibliographers to 1604 and 1607, but no copy of either is known. 2 facsimiles of the 2nd edition were issued in 1818, 1 by the Roxburghe Club, under the direction of Edward Littledale; and Prof. Arber reprinted it in 1877 in his English Garner, ii. 225–64. Whether "Diana," the reputed inspirer of Constable's verse, is more than a poet's fiction or an ideal personage — the outcome of many experiences — is very doubtful. Critics have pointed to Constable's cousin, Mary, countess of Shrewsbury (her husband was Constable's 2nd cousin on his mother's side), as the lady whom the poet addressed; 1 or 2 sonnets, on the other hand, confirm the theory that Penelope, lady Rich, Sir Philip Sidney's Stella, is the subject of the verse, but the difficulty of determining the authorship of any particular sonnet renders these suggestions of little service to Constable's biographer. Other poems Todd discovered another small collection of sonnets in manuscript at Canterbury, bearing Constable's name, and Park printed these in the supplement to the Harleian Miscellany, 1813 (ix. 491). They are addressed to various noble ladies of the writer's acquaintance, including Mary, countess of Pembroke; Anne, countess of Warwick; Margaret, countess of Cumberland; Penelope, lady Rich; and Mary, countess of Shrewsbury. In Park's Heliconia were published for the 1st time 16 other sonnets attributed to Constable, entitled Spirituall Sonnettes to the Honour of God and hys Sayntes, by H.C., printed from the Harleian MS. No. 7553. Constable contributed a sonnet that was very famous in its day to King James's Poetical Exercises, 1591; 4 sonnets ("To Sir Philip Sidney's Soule") to the 1595 edition of Sidney's Apologie for Poetry; 4 pastoral poems to Englands Helicon (1600), one of which — "The Shepheard's Song of Venus and Adonis" — (according to Malone) suggested Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare;" and a sonnet to Bolton's Elements of Armoury, 1610. Constable's works were collected and edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in 1859. Critical introduction by Andrew Lang The slight but graceful genius of Constable is best defined by some of the epithets which his contemporary critics employed. They spoke of his "pure, quick, and high delivery of conceit." Ben Jonson alludes to his "ambrosiac muse." His secular poems are "Certaine sweete sonnets in the praise of his mistress, Diana," conceived in the style of Ronsard and the Italians. The verses of his later days, when he had learned, as he says, "to live alone with God," are also sonnets in honour of the saints, and chiefly of Mary Magdalene. They are ingenious, and sometimes too cleverly confuse the passions of divine and earthly love. In addition to the sonnets we have 4 pleasant lyrics which Constable contributed to England’s Helicon. These things have at once the freshness of a young, and the trivial grace of a decadent literature, so curiously varied were the influences of the Renaissance in England. Shakespeare and Constable begin where Bion leaves off. Constable was neither more nor less than a fair example of a poet who followed rather than set the fashion. His sonnets were charged and overladen with ingenious conceits, but the freshness, the music, of his more free and flowing lyrics remain, and keep their charm.from Andrew Lang, "Critical Introduction: Henry Constable (1562–1613)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Jan. 5, 2016. Recognition His poem "On the Death of Sir Philip Sidney" was published in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900."On the Death of Sir Philip Sidney", Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919. Bartleby.com, Web, May 4, 2012. Publications *''Diana; or, The excellent conceitful sonnets of H.C.'' London: James Roberts for Richard Smith, 1594; Menston, UK: Scolar Press, 1973. *''Diana: The sonnets, and other poems'' (edited by William Carew Hazlitt). London: B.M. Pickering, 1859. *''Poems and Sonnets'' (edited by John Henry Gray). London: Ballantyne Press, 1897. *''Poems'' (edited by Joan Grundy). Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1969. See also *List of British poets References * Wikisource, Web, Dec. 28, 2017. Notes External links ;Poems *"On the Death of Sir Philip Sidney". *"To the Blessed Sacrament" *"Diaphenia" *Constable in The English Poets: An anthology: "A Pastoral Song," The Shepherd's Song of Venus and Adonis," "Sonnet to Sir Philip Sidney's Soul" * Henry Constable at PoemHunter (5 poems) * Henry Constable (1562-1613) at Sonnet Central *Henry Constable at Poetry Nook (135 poems) ;Books * ;Audio / video *Henry Constable poems at YouTube ;About *Henry Constable at Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts * Henry Constable biography at Acadia University *Henry Constable biography at eNotes *Henry Constable by William Minto at Sonnet Central *"A Study of the Spiritual Sonnets of Henry Constable" by Sr. Mary Melora Mauritz * Constable, Henry Category:1562 births Category:1613 deaths Category:Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Category:English Catholic poets Category:Catholic poets Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:English Roman Catholics Category:People of the Tudor period Category:People of the Stuart period Category:16th-century Roman Catholics Category:17th-century Roman Catholics Category:16th-century English people Category:17th-century English people Category:16th-century poets Category:17th-century poets Category:Sonneteers Category:English poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets